(This was written February 2014)
Can you cry at your church? Real crying, I mean, not that little tear of happiness or sadness that barely disturbs your mascara. Not the running streams that redden your eyes, but are hidden with a quick tissue. Not even the quiet crying interrupted by an occasional gasp for air.
I am wondering if it is ok to express those huge wracking sobs that come after a truly devastating loss. I am asking whether it is ok to gasp and moan and sob again and again; whether it is ok to cry out in the pain of loss; whether it is acceptable in your church to express pain that no one can console.
We believe Church is a place to you can go when you cannot be consoled. I have not found a place called Church where that is true. I cannot sit in worship and hear the words of hope, words of promise, or words of a better kingdom at hand.
To be clear, I believe that worship should be full of hope, full of the promise of the Kingdom, full of the image of a life that is better. At the same time, in the immediate moments, hours, weeks, even months of horrific loss, all of those promises are crass parodies that ring horribly untrue during the time of bereavement.
In the aftermath of a tragic accident, a suicide, an unexplainable disaster, in the aftermath of extreme loss, in the aftermath of inconsolable pain, many of us do not want to look ahead to when this loss might be considered ok, a learning experience, just one stop in our life’s journey. Our life is forever changed and the idea that this is might be ok only adds to our pain.
There is a time that it is right to sit in the pain; there is a time it is right to see the brokenness as beyond repair. I am at that time, and I cannot sit in worshipful hope. I can only sit in pain.
Perhaps the answer is that people in that much pain need to be accompanied outside of worship by a component of church: an individual member, a small group, support team. Maybe members should search out pained neighbors and sit with them where they are--outside of worship. Maybe it is too soon to be back in the full circle of community, maybe the care must be intimate, one child of God sitting with another. Maybe the time to be invited back to worship is still to come. Maybe the promise and hope and image of the Kingdom are gifts for a later healing step.
The return to corporate worship may come slowly, or it may come quickly; it will come to each person at their own pace. It will happen after the complete sense of being alone, and after days with people one at a time, after gatherings with two, maybe three others, after we are exhausted by all that time of sitting in pain.
Loving people instinctively want to ease each other's pain. That is why we bring the casserole and send the card and make a visit and attend the funeral and sit with us, filling up an all too empty house. These are all things we need to do to be the people of God with a neighbor in pain.
But loving people also instinctively want to reassure our neighbor that it will be ok, want to quickly jump to hope, and want to pass a tissue in hopes that the unbearable, heart-breaking crying will stop. We want to stop it because we care, yet it is our needs, not those of the sufferer, that are met by our words that insist on looking ahead.
Worship by its very nature must look ahead. We as the church, we as the people of God, are faced with a challenge: can we make a place for those who cannot look ahead? Can we make a place that is not in worship, but is still inside our circle of love? Can we sit with people who are not ready for hope, who are not ready for looking ahead, sit with those who still living with those huge wracking sobs that come after a truly devastating loss?
Can you cry at your church? Real crying, I mean, not that little tear of happiness or sadness that barely disturbs your mascara. Not the running streams that redden your eyes, but are hidden with a quick tissue. Not even the quiet crying interrupted by an occasional gasp for air.
I am wondering if it is ok to express those huge wracking sobs that come after a truly devastating loss. I am asking whether it is ok to gasp and moan and sob again and again; whether it is ok to cry out in the pain of loss; whether it is acceptable in your church to express pain that no one can console.
We believe Church is a place to you can go when you cannot be consoled. I have not found a place called Church where that is true. I cannot sit in worship and hear the words of hope, words of promise, or words of a better kingdom at hand.
To be clear, I believe that worship should be full of hope, full of the promise of the Kingdom, full of the image of a life that is better. At the same time, in the immediate moments, hours, weeks, even months of horrific loss, all of those promises are crass parodies that ring horribly untrue during the time of bereavement.
In the aftermath of a tragic accident, a suicide, an unexplainable disaster, in the aftermath of extreme loss, in the aftermath of inconsolable pain, many of us do not want to look ahead to when this loss might be considered ok, a learning experience, just one stop in our life’s journey. Our life is forever changed and the idea that this is might be ok only adds to our pain.
There is a time that it is right to sit in the pain; there is a time it is right to see the brokenness as beyond repair. I am at that time, and I cannot sit in worshipful hope. I can only sit in pain.
Perhaps the answer is that people in that much pain need to be accompanied outside of worship by a component of church: an individual member, a small group, support team. Maybe members should search out pained neighbors and sit with them where they are--outside of worship. Maybe it is too soon to be back in the full circle of community, maybe the care must be intimate, one child of God sitting with another. Maybe the time to be invited back to worship is still to come. Maybe the promise and hope and image of the Kingdom are gifts for a later healing step.
The return to corporate worship may come slowly, or it may come quickly; it will come to each person at their own pace. It will happen after the complete sense of being alone, and after days with people one at a time, after gatherings with two, maybe three others, after we are exhausted by all that time of sitting in pain.
Loving people instinctively want to ease each other's pain. That is why we bring the casserole and send the card and make a visit and attend the funeral and sit with us, filling up an all too empty house. These are all things we need to do to be the people of God with a neighbor in pain.
But loving people also instinctively want to reassure our neighbor that it will be ok, want to quickly jump to hope, and want to pass a tissue in hopes that the unbearable, heart-breaking crying will stop. We want to stop it because we care, yet it is our needs, not those of the sufferer, that are met by our words that insist on looking ahead.
Worship by its very nature must look ahead. We as the church, we as the people of God, are faced with a challenge: can we make a place for those who cannot look ahead? Can we make a place that is not in worship, but is still inside our circle of love? Can we sit with people who are not ready for hope, who are not ready for looking ahead, sit with those who still living with those huge wracking sobs that come after a truly devastating loss?
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